The panel deciding whether Mexico's policy on genetically modified corn breaks the rules of the USMCA will probably rule by March 2024, Mexican Economy Minister Raquel Buenrostro said at a press conference in Washington after the High Level Economic Dialogue meetings Sept. 29.
USMCA
The U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement is a free trade agreement between the three countries, also known as CUSMA in Canada and T-MEC in Mexico. Replacing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 2020, the agreement contains a unique sunset provision where, after six years (in 2026), any of the three parties may decide not to continue the agreement in its current form and begin a period of up to 10 years where USMCA provisions may be renegotiated.
Canadian leaders with an interest in trading with the U.S. are looking South with trepidation, realizing that President Donald Trump could be back in office in 2026, when all three countries will have to agree to continue the NAFTA successor.
A listing of recent Commerce Department antidumping and countervailing duty messages posted on CBP's website Sept. 26, along with the case number(s) and CBP message number, is provided below. The messages are available by searching for the listed CBP message number at CBP's ADCVD Search page.
The U.S. has asked Mexico to review a new USMCA rapid response labor complaint against a Teklas automotive parts plant in Aguascalientes, Mexico, the Labor Department said in a Sept. 25 news release. The request from DOL and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative follows a complaint filed in August by a Mexican labor union that claims Teklas is violating workers’ freedom of association and collective bargaining rights.
A listing of recent Commerce Department antidumping and countervailing duty messages posted on CBP's website Sept. 15, along with the case number(s) and CBP message number, is provided below. The messages are available by searching for the listed CBP message number at CBP's ADCVD Search page.
Two members of the House of Representatives asked the House Ways and Means Committee to renew the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program, and several others also advocated for trade policies on the day that the committee welcomed other members to advocate for their priorities.
It's not realistic to believe Canada, Mexico and the U.S. would be ready to admit more members to the USMCA before their presidential contests in 2024 or Canada's parliamentary elections in 2025, panelists said at a program hosted by the Council of the Americas. But Juan Carlos Baker, Mexico's former chief negotiator for the NAFTA successor, said the six-year review in 2026 would be a perfect time to make accession a possibility.
A former Office of the U.S. Trade Representative career negotiator and a former Trump administration trade adviser say that even if the U.S. is not going to reenter into a tweaked Trans-Pacific Partnership -- as they advised in an earlier think tank piece -- the U.S. needs to take trade negotiations in Asia more seriously to not get left behind.
The Supply Chain Agreement, one of the pillars of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity, will ask participating countries to work together to:
The Commerce Department published notices in the Federal Register Sept. 8 on the following AD/CV duty proceedings (any notices that announce changes to AD/CV duty rates, scope, affected firms or effective dates will be detailed in another ITT article):